


Higher and higher

by Em_Jaye



Series: The Long Way Around [33]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Anniversary, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Romantic Fluff, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:14:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23396833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: Woody Allen once said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans." With that in mind, Darcy had to wonder if there was anyone who could make God laugh quite like Steve Rogers.December 1975: First Anniversary
Relationships: Darcy Lewis/Steve Rogers
Series: The Long Way Around [33]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1402126
Comments: 58
Kudos: 204





	Higher and higher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crimtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimtastic/gifts).



> Kind of a suck salad of a week, huh friends? For those of you who also found themselves filing for unemployment this week, I offer a fist-bump in solidarity. For those who are still employed, please know how lucky you are to be retaining some stability in these completely insane times.
> 
> As for this fic, this was written in an attempt to cheer myself up with mention of good music and criminally underrated movies.
> 
> Gifted to my sweet Crim because this was actually, 100%, her idea.

Christmas lights decorated the tiny office that Tangie and Darcy shared. They had a little aluminum tree on the windowsill and a tacky electric menorah on the space between their typewriters where they’d pushed their desks together. Tangie was bent over a pile of files, digging fervently into a Chinese takeout box with a set of chopsticks, her attention on her work when Steve knocked on the open door.

“Go away; I’m on break!” Tangie yelled, looking up with a mouthful of noodles. Her eyes widened and she sat up straighter, dropping her chopsticks. “Hey!” she exclaimed once she’d swallowed thickly. She rolled back and started to get up, struggling to move as gracefully as she had a few months ago.

Steve waved her back down as he crossed into the office. “No, no,” he said with a smile. “I’ll come to you.”

She sank back into her chair without argument and Steve bent to let her wrap her arms around him in a brief hug. “What are you doing here?” she asked once she’d let him go.

He leaned on the desk and smiled as she grabbed her box of Chinese and began eating again. “Darcy asked me to pick up some of her files while I’m running errands.”

Tangie shook her head. “I _told_ her I was fine,” she muttered before she shoved another glob of noodles into her mouth. “She’s supposed to be sick,” she said once she’d chewed quickly and swallowed.

“She is,” Steve laughed. Darcy was incredibly sick and had been for the last three days. Sore throat, stuffed sinuses, and the kind of cough that used to make Steve’s mother reach for her rosary. “I think she’s more worried about putting too much extra on your plate.”

“Why? ‘Cause of this?” Tangie pointed to her hugely pregnant belly and waved the hand not holding chopsticks, brushing his concern away. “This baby boy is staying put for another two months,” she said with fleeting confidence before she narrowed her eyes and looked down at her swollen midsection. “Or he’d better,” she warned lightly, making Steve laugh. “If he wants to start his life out in my good graces.”

He stood up, still smiling and came around to Darcy’s side of the desk, remembering her instructions as to where the files she needed were located. “You’re sure it’s a boy?” he asked conversationally as he opened the middle drawer of her filing cabinet.

“I’m _hoping_ it’s a boy,” she said. “Darren only has sisters and his dad’s getting real weird about Darren having a son,” she rolled her eyes. “I just want a boy so they’ll all get off our backs about it.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for ya,” Steve said, pulling the stack of folders with the labels Darcy had made him repeat five times before he’d left the house. “Boy or girl,” he added, glancing up to give Tangie a smile. “That’s a lucky kid.”

She smiled back and held up a smaller takeout box. “I got extra spring rolls,” she shook the box, rattling them around. “I’ll share with you for being so sweet.”

He grinned again and shook his head. “Oh no, you eat. I’ve got takeout plans of my own, anyway.”

Tangie’s eyes fell to the calendar and she gasped. “Hang on, isn’t today your anniversary?”

“Sure is,” he said, dropping his head to scan for the last name on Darcy’s list.

“Okay, now I’m _double_ mad at her,” Tangie said firmly. “I got half a mind to call her and yell at her for sending you down here to bring her paperwork when she _should_ be keeping you home to celebrate.”

He laughed and, finding the last folder he needed, grabbed the file and closed the cabinet. “Well,” he slid the small stack into his satchel. “It’s kind of a hands-off celebration anyway,” he reminded. “Can’t really take her breath away when she can’t breathe without coughing to begin with.”

But Tangie wasn’t convinced. “Don’t matter,” she insisted. “You better be picking up some flowers on your way home.”

Steve slipped his bag over his shoulder with an affectionate sigh. “I was planning on it.”

“And don’t you give her those files until tomorrow,” she went on as he tidied up Darcy’s side of the desk before he crossed and dropped a brotherly kiss on Tangie’s forehead.

“Yes ma’am.”

She looked up and smiled wide. “And tell her I said happy anniversary.”

“I will,” Steve assured her patiently. “Merry Christmas, Tange.”

“Merry Christmas,” she echoed. “We love you and we’ll miss you on Wednesday.”

“I know,” he said regretfully. “We’ll miss you guys too, but Darcy really doesn’t want to get anyone sick.”

“Mama still wants to make sure you guys have cookies,” she said, making him smile again. “Is it okay that she brings some to the house?”

He nodded. “Of course. I’ll lift the quarantine long enough to accept supplies.”

She giggled and blew him a kiss. “Take care of my best friend,” she ordered lightly. “I’m hoping we can all get together before New Year’s.”

Steve waved in the doorway. “I’ll let her know you’re planning something,” he promised. “It’ll kick her recovery into high gear.”

He closed the door to give her some peace while she finished her meal and stopped to purchase a bouquet of roses and gardenias from the hospital giftshop. After debating for another moment, he stopped at the pharmacy and picked up a tub of Vicks, another box of tissues, and a bottle of cough syrup.

The clerk noticed his flowers as he dropped the rest of the items in a bag and offered a smile. “Romantic night planned?”

Steve chuckled. “Looking like it’s going to be more of a raincheck at this point.”

Darcy’s coughing could be heard from the driveway, confirming his suspicions that she had not miraculously recovered as she’d promised when he’d left the house earlier. The couch was empty, though her nest of blankets and balls of tissues still littered the cushions and the floor. He followed the sound of deep, bronchial coughing through the living room, dropping her flowers and supplies on the dining room table. “Darcy?” he called as he shrugged out of his coat and hung it in the hall closet. “I’m home.”

“I’m back here!” she called before succumbing to another coughing fit.

He made his way down the hall to their bedroom, stepping over Scrabble, napping in the hall and entirely unconcerned that he’d come home. Darcy had her back to him and was bent over something on the bed. “Hey,” he said, leaning in the doorway.

She coughed again, only once, before she straightened and turned around. “Hey,” she smiled and pushed her glasses up. She’d taken a shower while he was gone, her hair was wet and piled up on top of her head—a few stray curls had already escaped—and she smelled like Ivory soap. She held up a hand. “Don’t get too close.”

Steve ignored her warning and crossed the room to kiss her anyway. “I’m not going to get sick,” he reminded her for the hundredth time when he pulled away. He tucked a rogue curl behind her ear. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty awful,” she admitted. Her voice was hoarse and came from deep in her chest. “But I _did_ manage to take a shower _and,_ ” she motioned to herself with a flourish, “put on _fresh_ pajamas.” She crossed one foot over the other did a little twirl. “Just for you.”

He grinned. “Lucky me.”

“And I ordered pizza, a big Caesar salad, and—” she sneezed three times in quick succession, “breadsticks.”

“Sounds great,” he said while she blew her nose and tucked another empty tissue box under her arm.

“Did you get my files?” she asked as they started back down the hall toward the kitchen. Her congestion had all her _m’s_ sounding like _b’s._

“Yup,” he nodded. “But you’re not getting them until tomorrow.” He smiled when she looked back over her shoulder. “Tangie’s orders.”

Darcy sighed. “How is Tangie? Still the cutest pregnant lady in the world?”

“Still the cutest,” he promised. “She’s fine. She misses you—wishes us a happy anniversary.” He took the chance to step ahead of her just before they reached the dining room and he plucked her flowers from the table. “Speaking of,” he kissed her forehead as he pressed the bouquet into her hands.

Darcy’s entire face brightened. “For me?” She dropped her nose and did her best to inhale the sweet smell before she set them back down on the table and canceled the distance between them. She wrapped her arms around his neck, his hands fell automatically to her hips. “Thank you,” she said softly, stretching up to brush her lips to his. “I’m so lucky to be married to you.”

“I was thinking,” he said between her brief, soft kisses, “the exact same thing.” He had to remind himself that she wasn’t feeling well; that the heat between them was actual, physical heat from Darcy’s fever, and that any minute now she was going to start—

She broke away and dropped her head just in time to sneeze—loud and _wet—_ directly into his chest. She covered her mouth too late and looked up, eyes wide. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry,” she said into her hands. Her face turned pink as the doorbell rang.

He laughed despite her mortification and shook his head. “You think you can answer that?” he asked. “I’m gonna change my shirt.”

By the time he returned to the living room with a clean shirt—the one she’d used as a handkerchief tossed in the laundry basket—Darcy had assembled their dinner on coffee table. He grabbed two plates from the kitchen and the paper bag from the pharmacy before he sat down. “Before we dig in,” he said, handing her the bag.

She looked inside and let out a cry of relief. “Oh, thank God,” she exclaimed, pulling out the tub of Vicks. “I was rationing this morning.”

He chuckled. “Go nuts.”

“After dinner,” she said, setting it carefully aside like it was a treat before she dumped the rest out. “Tissues and cough syrup too? This is the sweetest and most antiseptic anniversary gift ever.”

“That is _not_ your anniversary gift,” he promised, hoping his face didn’t betray the anxiety lingering at the back of his head over the gift he’d been working on for the better part of three months that was hidden behind the bookshelves in the office.

Darcy settled back into her blankets when Steve brushed off her attempts to help clean up. “Speaking of gifts,” she said once she’d coughed into another tissue and her voice fell even deeper in her chest. “I have a very obviously wrapped one for you on the bed. If you’re being Mr. House Spouse,” she glanced at the plates and empty pizza boxes in his hand, “could you get it for me?”

He kissed the top of her head and took everything back into the kitchen before he did as she asked. There was a large, thick rectangle she must have been finishing wrapping when he’d come home. He picked it up and ducked into the office to retrieve his own gift and returned to the living room to find her poking at the logs in the fireplace. One crackled and the fire roared back to life as he dropped onto the sofa and set the two wrapped presents on the empty coffee table.

“Okay, you have to open yours first,” she said sitting down beside him, rubbing absently at her throat. “Because mine’s kind of lame and it would have been much less lame if I was feeling well enough to give it to you with a greatest hits of sexual favors but,” she paused and coughed deeply, reaching for her new bottle of cough syrup. “That’ll just have to wait—assuming I live through the winter.”

Shaking his head, a smile stuck at the corner of his mouth, Steve picked up the gift she’d wrapped for him while she uncapped the cough syrup and took a gulp. He tore back the paper to find a large, leather bound sketchbook. It was beautiful—the leather felt soft and supple under his hand as he ran his palm over the cover. Inside were pages and pages waiting to be filled and a note that Darcy had written in the corner of the first page. _Every year with you is more beautiful than the last. Here’s to a million more. I love you, Darcy._

When he looked to his left, she was biting her lip. “It’s perfect,” he said sincerely. Risking being sneezed on again, he kissed her. “Thank you.”

“I could have been a lot more creative,” she said, as if she’d misunderstood how much he liked it. “I know the traditional first anniversary gift is _supposed_ to be paper, but I literally just gave you a whole stack of blank paper.”

“You gave me a beautiful gift,” he laughed. “It’s not lame at all.” He cleared his throat. “Not that I won’t be absolutely cashing in on your—uh—sexual favor playlist or whatever you just called it.”

“Greatest hits,” she corrected with a grin and another cough. “All the classics—maybe test out something new toward the end.”

He barked out a laugh and kissed her again. “You’re a menace,” he assured her before he reached for her gift and set it on her lap. “Happy anniversary.”

Steve tried not to hold his breath as she tore the paper. She was still grinning when she pushed it away to reveal the sketch he’d made and framed for her, but he watched as her smile dropped away slowly, her eyebrows dipping together slightly in confusion. “Steve, what is…” The question died on her lips and he thought he could pinpoint the moment she realized what he’d tried to give her. She looked up, her eyes wide and glassy. “Is this our wedding reception?”

He swallowed hard. The scene he’d sketched—and sketched and sketched and sketched until it finally felt right—was of a dance floor. From the perspective of someone in the middle, surrounded by couples and groups of people dancing together beneath a thin white tent strung with twinkling lights. “What I—uh—hoped it would have been like,” he admitted. “If we could have...”

They didn’t have to talk about the real reason they’d eloped. They told people they were feeling impulsive and neither of them liked the idea of a big wedding, they joked with each other that it had been almost entirely due to the tragic wardrobe they would have had to deal with. And those things were all true, but Steve knew that wasn’t the real reason Darcy had not wanted to plan a wedding. The real reason was much sadder and impossible to explain to anyone else. She hadn’t wanted another day that would remind them both of all the people they were missing.

All the people who should have been there.

His friends had been easy to draw from memory. Sam’s familiar gap-toothed smile while he danced with Wanda, Natasha and Bucky with their arms around each other, Bruce and Betty, Pepper and Tony, Clint, Laura, their kids.

Darcy’s eyes dropped again, her fingers touched the scene gently, like she was afraid to smudge something, even through the glass. “Jane…” she said softly, letting her fingertips ghost over the image of Jane dancing with Thor closer to the foreground.

Her side had been more difficult. He had only seen Jane a handful of times, tried to recall as many details as he could to add her and Erik Selvig. He’d placed Erik a little further off, seated at a table with Nick and Maria—all three looking more relaxed and happier than he’d ever had the pleasure of seeing them in real life. Her parents took a little more work—the cause of three of his do-overs while he tried to guess what they might look like forty years from the photo on the mantle. But Darcy’s breath swept from her when her eyes moved to the two of them dancing. “How did…” Her eyes filled with tears again when she realized who he had added behind her parents. “Oh my God, Lizzie—”

“I’m sure that’s not—” He was going to say he was sure that wasn’t what Darcy’s sister really looked like, but that he’d tried to picture her as best he could with all the things she had told him in the last five years. That Lizzie was tall and slender and had all the same features as her younger sister, only they fit together differently— _better,_ according to Darcy, though Steve didn’t believe that—on the older Lewis sister’s face. High cheekbones and a rounded forehead and a smile that had been corrected by braces.

He was going to say he’d redo some of them if they weren’t right, but Darcy had set the frame down on the coffee table and launched herself into his arms. She wrapped herself around him so tightly it was almost hard to breathe. “Thank you,” she said, her words muffled against his shoulder. When she pulled back to look at him, her eyes had welled again. “I didn’t think I’d ever see any of them again for so long.” She hugged him again and he felt his heart twist and a lump rise in his throat when her tears soaked into his shoulder. “I love you.”

He swallowed again and kissed the side of her head. “I love you too,” he said softly.

She stayed wrapped around him like that for what felt like a long time before she sniffled and sat back. “What are we dancing to?”

Steve frowned, his head tilted to one side. “Dancing to?”

“At our reception,” she smiled as she wiped at the tears still clinging to her eyelashes. “What song are we all dancing to in this picture?”

He smiled and pushed her hair back from her face. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “We don’t have a song.”

Her nose wrinkled in that way that made him want to cover her face in kisses. “That’s…officially unacceptable.”

Steve snorted. “What should we do about it?” he asked as she unfolded her legs from beneath herself and got unsteadily to her feet. He watched as she picked up the frame and placed it carefully on the mantle. “You want to hang that there?”

She nodded. “But later,” she said turning to the record player in the corner. “We need a song.” She ran her fingernail along the shelf where all their albums lived before she turned around. “Radio or record?”

He laughed. “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “What are we doing?”

“Okay, I was actually thinking we should play this game anyway,” she said, sounding more excited. “Since there’s not like, _one_ song that always makes me think of you—”

“There isn’t?”

“No,” she frowned. “Is—is there one you have for me?”

It was his turn to frown. “No, I guess not.” He thought about it a second longer. “We did dance to that one Elton John song—”

Darcy waved his suggestion away. “I was already stupid-in-love with you by then,” she said, her voice gravely and hoarse before she started coughing. “Dancing with you to that was like…” she paused and tipped her head to the side. “Like really hot torture.”

Steve felt his smile return. “It was?” he asked before he realized what she’d said before. “Wait—you were?”

“Oh yeah,” she nodded emphatically. “I was a wreck.”

“You must have been hiding it well,” he decided with a smile. If he was honest, he couldn’t remember if he had already realized he was in love with Darcy by the time they’d danced at her birthday party. There was no lightning bolt moment, no one thing in particular she’d done or said that made him fall in love with her. There was no sudden fall at all, just a slow realization that he had somewhere along the line without realizing it.

Darcy laughed again. “I absolutely was not,” she said. “You were just oblivious,” she beckoned with her hands. “Come here, come play this game with me.”

He got off the couch and knelt beside her. “Okay,” he said easily as Scrabble trotted over to bonk his head against Steve’s knee. “How do we play?”

“We each randomly pick an album and play a song,” she added quickly, pointing at him. “And say yes or no to whether or not it’s _our_ song.”

He smiled again. “And what if we say no to both songs?”

She shrugged. “Then it’s a tie-breaker from the radio and we have to go with whatever is playing when we turn it on.”

“And whatever song it is,” he clarified. “That’s it? That’s our song forever?”

Darcy grinned. “High stakes, huh?”

“Alright,” he bounced a shoulder. “Ladies first.”

She closed her eyes and ran her finger along the edges of the albums once, then back a second, and finally a third time before stopping somewhere in the middle. Still not looking, she pulled it from the shelf and clumsily managed to set it on the turntable. She opened her eyes as she dropped the needle in the groove toward the edge.

“ _Outta south Alabama come a country boy,”_ Jim Croce crooned the second verse of his unmistakable hit and Darcy dissolved into giggles, falling against Steve. _“Said ‘I’m lookin’ for a man named Jim—'”_

“No,” she choked, vetoing her own choice before Steve had a chance to say it.

“No?” he joked back. “You don’t think a song about a pool-hustler getting murdered is romantic?”

“A love song for the ages,” she assured him before she reached for a tissue to sneeze. “But I’m still saying no. What about you?”

“It’s a definite no,” he laughed while she lifted the arm and put the album back in its place on the shelf. “My turn?”

“God speed.”

Steve closed his eyes and mimicked what Darcy had done, stopping after only one tour over the edges of the records. He pulled it down and slid the vinyl from its sleeve, placing it carefully on the turntable and dropping the arm without looking.

“ _I had some dreams, there were clouds in my coffee—clouds in my coffee and—”_

“I’m going to veto my own song,” Steve said plainly, unable to help his laughter when Darcy let out another cackle that must have hurt her throat. “This is _not_ our song.”

“You don’t think I’m so vain?” she asked along with the chorus. “That I’m so vain that I probably think this song is about me?”

“I’m getting nervous that the radio isn’t going to come through for us,” he said, placing Carly Simon back on the shelf. “We might get stuck with a Christmas song.”

Darcy wrinkled her nose. “Oh, damn. I didn’t think about that.”

“How about a different tie-breaker?” he suggested. “You pick the album, I’ll drop the needle.”

She nodded and immediately shut her eyes. “I like it,” she said, already running her finger over the spines again. It took her four tours along the shelf before she finally stopped. Steve grabbed it and forced himself not to look at the track listing as he set the album on the turntable and set the needle down.

“ _Your love keeps lifting me higher—”_

Darcy’s eyes flew open at the sound of Jackie Wilson’s voice. “I love this song.”

He laughed. “Me too.”

She was already wiggling, dancing in place. “I didn’t think you knew this song.”

“Yeah,” he grinned, “from _Ghostbusters 2_.”

She stopped dancing and sat up straight. “You saw _Ghostbusters 2_?”

“Yeah,” he repeated. “ _Ghostbusters_ was on one of my lists of things to watch from the last seventy years, so I watched both. It was good.”

“You _liked Ghostbusters 2_?”

“Is that…surprising?”

Darcy almost glowed, her mouth hanging open in shock. “I’m one of the only people I know who liked _Ghostbusters 2_!”

“They called The Statue of Liberty a ‘harbor chick,’” Steve laughed. “And made her walk down Broadway. What’s not to like?”

“Steve!” She climbed into his lap suddenly and laced her fingers behind his neck, tilting his face up to kiss him. “You’re my dream guy!”

He laughed against her lips; his hands fell to her thighs. “Is that all it takes?” he asked lightly. “A fondness for sequels that nobody else liked?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “That’s all it takes.”

She broke away too soon and tucked her face into her elbow to let out another deep, bronchial hacking cough that hurt his throat just to hear. He waited until the worst had passed before he shifted and urged her to untangle herself from his lap so he could stand and help her up. “Come on,” he said gently. “You should probably get back in bed anyway.”

But Darcy kept her hand in his and reset the needle to start at the beginning of the song. “Not yet,” she insisted and glanced back at the gift he had made for her. She curled an arm around his shoulders. “One dance first,” she smiled up at him. “They’re playing our song.”

Steve smiled and obliged. He couldn’t say no to his wife on their anniversary, he reminded himself as he spun Darcy out and back in, keeping up with the upbeat and bouncy rhythm. Not when they were playing their song.

**Author's Note:**

> Songs:
> 
> -Don't Mess Around with Jim by Jim Croce  
> -You're So Vain by Carly Simon  
> -Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson 
> 
> <3


End file.
